School usually ended at 1:40 pm. Every boy held his breath in anticipation, each imagining the old peon making his way to the headmaster’s office, which housed the old hand bell that was rung once every 40 minutes to signify a change in routine. The bell was rung by hand; each ring slightly different in intensity, reflecting the old man’s feeble and wavering strength.
The seconds leading up to 1:40 pm felt like hours. Sometimes, the old man was late which only made it worse. However, the moment the sound of the bell filled the air throughout the school’s campus, classrooms everywhere erupted with joy. A flood of uniformed boys poured out of the classrooms, bags securely hung on their backs and lunch bags swung around their necks as they made their way to the bus yard.
It was like watching prisoners finally set foot on free soil.
Some of the boys stayed back. They had all signed up for after hour classes, where a proficient tutor was hired to augment their understanding of complex subjects. In the two hours that separated the end of official school time and the beginning of after hours classes, the boys spent their time eating a hearty meal at the school cafeteria and immediately sweating it off in a competitive game of street football on the school’s old playground. They loosened their ties, un-tucked their shirts and lost themselves in the joy of the game, so much so that they ended up being a few minutes late in getting to that evening’s designated classroom.
Panic-stricken, they gathered themselves and ran towards the barracks that housed the classrooms. Most of the boys soon let go of their anxiety and began to enjoy the wind on their faces as they raced to the classroom. The tutor was a kind and understanding woman, she wouldn’t give them a hard time for being kids. The more studious of the lot were worried about something else however.
The principal’s bungalow was along the way between the playground and the barracks, tucked away in a small compound filled with majestic trees. The front of the house had a porch with a small settee and coffee table that overlooked the garden. The principal and his wife, who served as headmistress, often sat there and enjoyed an evening cup of tea.
Unfortunately for these boys, they happened to pass by right when the principal had settled into his seat and taken a bite of his afternoon biscuit. He saw the boys dashing towards the barracks in all their sweaty and unkempt glory.
“BOYS!” he growled, stopping them in their tracks. “WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?”
The boys froze in their tracks with fear. They slowly turned to face him, their heads lowered and legs rattling.
“Sir, we were going for evening classes…” the bravest of the lot began to murmur, but the principal held up his hand and started at them. He had a vicious look on his face.
“You boys are shameful!” he snarled at them. “Look at yourselves! Is this any way to be on school grounds? Why are you late for a class? Look at that boy” he said, singling one of them out. “YOU! WHY IS YOUR BELT DANGLING LIKE THAT! YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE A GENTLEMAN, NOT A VILLAGER!”
The boys whimpered as he gave them a stern look and dismissed them with a wave of his hand. They hastily hopped their way to class, fixing their ties and tucking in their shirts along the way.
I often think about the number of things that confused me about all of this. Why were the boys, who were being sent to school to learn from teachers, attending a class on their school campus conducted by an external tutor? Wasn’t it the precise nature of their own teachers’ job to teach them? What was the sense in paying for school and for an external tutor when both serve the same purpose? To teach and educate?
Why did the principal compare the boy to a villager for being slightly untidy in his appearance? Why did the principal not give them a chance to explain themselves?
And finally, why were they in an all-boys school in this day and age? In fact, why do same sex schools continue to exist at all?
Education is the foundation of our civilization.
Let me rephrase that. Education should be the foundation of our civilization. The way it is imparted today however, leaves a lot to be desired.
To understand the growth of a civilization, we must look to its roots and foundation. What forms that civilization’s thoughts and ideas? What forms its drives and desires? What forms its priorities? How well does it understand its natural world?
In a nutshell, how does it derive its knowledge and learn from it?
A truly successful civilization is one that prospers and has a sense of unity. It has a core sense of values, equality, love and progress being chief among them. There is no place for war in a world where such a civilization flourishes. Instead, science and technology grow in harmony with nature and the world evolves into the best version of itself.
This world would have a united purpose. To achieve a world like this, we need to fundamentally upend the education system.
I didn’t always feel so strongly about education, because there are many educated people in this world that possess the moral compass of a tyrant and many uneducated people in this world that possess wisdom beyond anyone with the best education. One day, I was lounging on the couch in our living room, counting down the seconds till it was acceptable to crack open a beer. My roommates were in the background, talking about someone they knew who’s child had just been enrolled into a playschool.
“What exactly is playschool anyway?” I asked, lacking context as such a thing never existed for me back home in India. “It is just where parents drop their kids off to have fun while they are at work?”
“Not exactly” one of my roommates responded. “I think it’s such an important step in the growth of a human being. Its when you first step outside your nest into a new environment where you interact with other human beings, learn basic things like what a routine is, this is when you sleep, this is when you wake up, this is an activity we do together as a team, so many fundamental social skills are taught at this age”.
This was a revelation to me. Never had I thought to look at my own species the way we watch nature documentaries. I’d watched a special on Nat Geo that spoke about elephants and how their calves first learn to socialize at watering holes. They learn social skills at these gatherings. The similarity began to look clear now. Humans do the same thing at playschool. Playschool is like the watering hole in so many ways. It was surprising how clear the importance of an organized education system became to me when I thought of it in this scientific way. By observing my own species as a species. All our basic and primal actions are coded into us as our education system shapes the way we think and behave throughout the course of our lives.
Education, is what we call the forum where we as a species develop our core social skills in addition to other utility-based skills. It is where we should learn how to be, not just how the world works. The opportunity to teach should be a privilege, not one of the least desired and paying jobs in the world today. It should be a place where males and females learn to interact together and in an inclusive manner, not a segregated brainwashing mechanism. It should be a place that teaches tolerance and empathy, not classism and hierarchy.
I want to see an education system that focuses on mental wellbeing, ethics, arts and culture as much as it does technology, numbers, science and economics. But so long as we make separate schools for girls and boys, teach our children that a villager is an uncouth goon and follow a mindless, templatized exam-based education system, we may never truly achieve the reform our civilization needs. We have to re-educate the masses.
However, the tone is always set from the top. Whatever the rich and powerful dictate is the way the world eventually functions.
